Of chickens and eggs
by Martina
Summary: Methos and co. are about to make friends, through several plot-wise twists and turns, with improbable OC Faye, former cave-woman. Pay attention, the genre here is parody. Keep that in mind before flaming me. R&R!
1. Default Chapter

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing. I'm just a lowly student with too much time on her hands. (And this in the middle of my finals. I must be either incredibly cocky or just that good. I'll be sure to keep you posted on which.) I'm just playing in somebody else's proverbial sandbox, and while I can't promise to leave everything exactly as it is, I'm not planning any major architectural changes either. Faye, however, is mine, and the challenge is out to anyone willing to try and prove her Mary Sue-ness.

**A/N: **Finally, here I am with chapter two. It was written in a single session this morning, which really says nothing either about the quality of the chapter or my competency as a writer, except, possibly, that I am no more consistent in output than I am in chapter order. I make no promises as to chapter three. Only this, that it will, eventually, be written. I'm keeping 'Of chickens and eggs' as a title for the whole. I'm quirky that way. Also, I've changed the genre to parody. I figured that, in good grace, I couldn't get away with just calling it humor anymore. Finally, allow me to add, just for clarity, that_ chapter one comes at the end_. All the rest will be a prequel to it.

**BTW:** As for keeping you posted on my finals: I finished with honours. Still, I'm probably more cocky than good.

* * *

Joe approached the two at the corner table who were happily ensconced behind their beers. They stopped talking to regard him in a comically identical way, like two cunning six-year-olds denying that they'd been plotting a scheme to raid the cookie jar. Or the bar, as the case may be.

"Don't stop talking on my account," said Joe, looking from one to the other. "Whatever you were talking about, it must have been interesting, 'cause I could hear you giggling from all the way over there."

"We were just pondering the unthinkable, Joe," said Methos, faking a dreamy look and failing as the tremendous amount of Stella he had thusfar consumed was making his eyes cross.

"Inventing meaning for the insignificant," added Faye with an enigmatic frown.

"Right. Sort of like the chicken and the egg?" ventured Joe.

"Nono, we've solved that one," said Methos, lifting his half-full Stella to his lips and emptying it in one gulp. "See, the chicken is merely the egg's way of making another egg."

Faye pointed a swaying index finger in his general direction by way of an accusatory gesture. "You so copped that line. Admit it. This is rich. You even suck at _faking _intellectuality."

"I did not." Methos gave her an even stare over the rim of her glass which was now also rapidly being emptied.

"Did too," Faye insisted, setting the glass down with a satisfied clunk. "Samuel Butler. I know my sociobiologists, dude."

"And who do you think he'd been talking to the night before he wrote that?" said Methos, eyebrows impressively drawn up.

"No way..." said Faye, mimicking his expression. "You don't mean to tell me that you have an _original _sense of humour..."

They eyed each other a moment, then collapsed into helpless thigh-slapping laughter.

"Right," said Joe, failing to recognize what was so funny. "I'll just get you another couple of beers, then."

This produced no intelligible response, so he headed on back to the bar to meet the Highlander who had just strayed in and was arranging his coat and himself on stools by the empty bar.

"What's going on over there?" he asked of Joe, motioning to the two in the corner as he took a perch.

"Beats me," said Joe, rinsing a couple of glasses and moving to the tap. "I think Faye is trying to out-Methos Methos. Or maybe it's the other way around. Who knows. I'm just a Watcher. I observe and record and never quite understand."

Macleod gave a small grin. "The odd couple. Who'd have thought?"

"Yeah," replied Joe as he pulled two beers. "Either of them on their own can be entertaining company, but put the two of them together and they tend to give you that funny feeling that the conversation has been mugged."

MacLeod grinned again, took the beers from Joe. "I'll take them over."

"Thanks."

"Should I expect to get paid?"

"Of course not. The tab they've got running could feed a small country for a decade. A state of affairs I should remedy at some point, I know," he added when he caught MacLeod's look.

Macleod sidled over to the pair in the corner just in time to hear the end of a story that Faye was telling with some vehemence and dramatic gestures.

"... And that's what he said to me. I was outraged. _Outraged_."

"As you would be," agreed Methos.

"Quite. I mean, the cheek of it."

"Right, right," nodded Methos. "But, you know, just for clarification, um – was that before or after you murdered his only son?"

"Whose side are you on anyway?" said Faye with a smouldering sidelong glare.

"His own, I should think," interrupted the Highlander. He set down the glasses, gathered up the empty ones, ignored Methos' poisonous look. "Here's your Stella. Pay your tab." And he was off.

"He's a bit dry, tonight," he caught Faye's remark.

To which Methos replied something in a language that probably hadn't been spoken since hot water was invented and cracked them up again.

MacLeod sighed and went to strike up a conversation with Joe.

"Business a bit slow tonight, isn't it?" he said, looking around the room which held only eleven people, including themselves and the pair at the corner table.

"Yeah," said Joe wretchedly. "Nothing like a report of a 'freak lightning storm' to keep away customers."

"I'm surprised that your sound installation survived the event."

"It didn't," said Joe drily. "I replaced it."

"You had the funds for that?" asked the Highlander, looking concerned.

"Not really. I'm seriously in the red."

"Well, that takes the biscuit. First she threatens you, kidnaps you, shortcircuits your livelihood, and then leaves you on the brink of bankruptcy without a second thought." Macleod was lightly rapping a large fist into the shiny polished surface of the bar and frowning ominously. "That kite won't fly."

"Not without a second thought, really, I wouldn't say," objected Joe weakly. "She did promise to pay for the damages."

"And why hasn't she already?"

Joe shrugged with one shoulder, rubbing vigorously at an imaginary spot on the glass he was drying off and didn't reply.

"Come on, Joe," persisted the Highlander. "She's probably been saving up since they built the pyramids. You know she has plenty of cash stashed away _somewhere_."

Joe continued not to reply.

"You're not afraid of her, are you?" asked MacLeod then, much in the same tone as one might use to say 'you didn't fart, did you?'

"Well," said Joe, after a long pause, "considering she's held me at knifepoint, gunpoint and swordpoint – in that order – and stolen my legs twice, I'd say I'm remarkably unafraid, wouldn't you?"

At exactly this point, implausible-looking Faye popped up beside MacLeod like a jack-in-the-box, held out two equally implausible-seeming empty glasses and placidly requested "two more."

MacLeod leaned on the bar and looked at her thoughtfully in exactly the sort of way that normally lets people know unmistakably that they're being Watched.

Faye did her level best to return his gaze icily, even while her eyes couldn't quite seem to agree on what she should look at. "Do you have a problem?" she asked in the low voice that normally lets people know unmistakably that the speaker is Unimpressed.

MacLeod gave her the once-over. Bushy dirty blond hair that seemed to have missed the invention of the comb. Thick eyebrows hovering asymmetrically over grey eyes, usually piercing clear but now considerably hazy. Crude features, interesting rather than attractive. Square jaw, long neck, stocky build. Dressed like a preschooler's idea of fashion, including odd socks and an improbable assortment of accessories, rather heavy on the large wooden beads and ornaments of indeterminate ethnic origin. MacLeod found that if he ignored the few modern-looking pieces in the ensemble and squinted ever so slightly while tilting his head to the left, he could just about make out the woman's humble cave-dwelling, mammoth-hunting origins.

"Well, what _is _your problem?" she said again, hopping impatiently from foot to foot, in due obedience to the laws of Excessive Consumption. "Joe, could you hurry it along with those beers, please. Nature _shouts_."

"Sure," said Joe. "If you could tell me what brand other than Stella you would like." In deference to those same laws, the barrel had run out.

"No Stella?"

"No."

"Then I don't care. Actually, I'll pick them up on the way back from the little girls' room." And she scurried off.

Joe sighed heavily and went to dig out two bottles of Palm, knowing – as he would – all about Methos and Faye's arbitrary preference for Belgian beers. Arbitrary, at least, to most Americans, whose taste-buds seem congenitally ill-equipped for the task of discerning a truly good beer when they meet one.

"Joe," MacLeod interrupted his nervous fumbling with the bottle opener.

"Um?"

"Would you like me to talk to her?"

"No!" The cap came off with a plop and narrowly missed the Highlander's left eye. "I'll get my money, Mac. Sooner or later," he added miserably.

MacLeod took a generous swig of his beer, exhaled contentedly with drawn back lips in that way only men do, as if wanting to prove that there's a manly sort of way of enjoying a drink which is incomprehensible to women. "Well, Joe, you might be looking at later rather than sooner. Don't forget, we have time," he told his friend with a rather premature I-told-you-so look.

"Right," said Joe, carefully pouring the Palm's into the appropriate bowl- shaped glasses raised on a short foot. "I'll get my money, Mac," he repeated. "Don't you worry about that."

The Highlander conceded with another swig of beer and mandatory manly growl. They kept a companionable silence as the Palm's sat frothing on the bar and were shortly after picked up by Faye. MacLeod avoided meeting her eyes, having decided that no good would come of it anyway. He and Joe spent the rest of the evening talking about this and that and the weather and making a point of drinking moderately, while such fragments of conversation from the jolly drinking buddies in the corner wafted towards them over the music as "good grief! Wouldn't that be a bestseller! Bigger than the New Testament!" ("Good grief?" echoed Joe to MacLeod, making a funny face.) and "you did _what _to the sheep?!"

Sometimes they exchanged a knowing look. Most of the time, they didn't bother.


	2. chapter 2

If some people can be said to be a chapter in the book of history, then others must be conceded, sadly, to be but a comma. Or, possibly, a dot in a long row of them. In fact, this would be most people. The real, unedited book of history would therefore be a rather peculiar jumble of much punctuation, actual vocabulary would be scarce, and never mind grammar. This is perhaps why personal journals are at times so much in vogue.

Faye did not hold with personal journals. Faye had little truck with vogue. Faye was a question mark in the book of history, in the most literal sense, the weird curly thing that even punctuation itself doesn't really know what to do with, squatting awkwardly at the end of the question, letting you know that this is where reason must give way to wonder.

When writing about Faye, one must begin by pointing out that she couldn't possibly be a protagonist. Antagonism would be more along the lines of her character, though even that would be stretching the concept very thin. To put it simply, if she were around to be asked to be in a story, she would most likely stare at you blankly for a few unnerving minutes, then turn and walk away, never to be seen or heard from again. This is what she is good at.

So, we catch her off guard. This is not as tricky as it sounds. Faye and 'on guard' are passing acquaintances at best. Which makes you wonder how she's managed to stay alive for so long. In this particular instance, we are assisted by a respectable amount of Belgian beer. Duvel, to be more precise, not coincidentally named after the Dutch word for 'devil'. It can easily convince the untrained stomach that it has horns and a long swishing pointy tail.

Joe had just refreshed her drink and eyed her sceptically, trying to decide whether or not to cut her off. He made up his mind that, for the time being, he would not, due mostly to the slim chance that anyone else was going to rid him of his supply of assorted Belgian beers that he had stocked up on a whim three months ago, and partly to her seeming quite harmless, as far as lonely heavy drinkers go, which is usually downhill, fast.

"Your good is beer," she said, fixing him unsteadily.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Um, hang on, that sounded different in my head. Beer. Good. That's the gist."

"Ah," said Joe, "that's nice," and sweetly slid a small bowl of peanuts her way. She was looking at it and muttering something below her breath, when quite suddenly she cringed as if hearing nails drawn across a blackboard.

"Hi," Joe heard behind him, and turned around to greet MacLeod, fresh-cheeked and damp from the downpour outside. "Some decent Scottish-like weather out there," the Highlander remarked, while scanning the room suspiciously.

They raised their eyebrows at each other in a telling way and Joe furtively thumbed over his shoulder at Faye. MacLeod's frown deepened as he spotted her. People often frown when faced with Faye. The sight more or less demands it. She was trying to pull the hood of her death-by-yellow oilskin abomination of a coat – for some unaccountable reason never taken off – over her face while muttering some more. The result looked something like a primeval canary in a stubborn mood.

The glass of Duvel disappeared under the hood, came out empty, followed by a distressingly moist-sounding belch, and suddenly everything happened at once. Joe moved to take it away and ask if it needed a refill when, with a move like a striking rattlesnake, her hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. He was dragged out of his per usual already precarious balance and fell heavily against the bar. The glass was shoved to the floor and shattered in the process, but never mind that, Joe had more Duvel glasses than he was likely to ever need. MacLeod jumped, toppled the person sitting next to him off his barstool. By the time he reached Faye and Joe, she had already released his wrist, having seen what she needed.

"Oh, bugger," said the hood.

All eyes in the place were, erringly, on MacLeod. He grinned wretchedly, picked his bewildered neighbour up off the floor and tried to settle him on his stool, patting him soothingly on the back. It took three tries and the offer to buy him a few beers. Meanwhile, Joe had his legs back under him, more or less, and Faye was trying to figure out how to get off her stool without hurting herself.

"Show's over, people, nothing to see here," said MacLeod, before intercepting Faye halfway down the stool. Of course, they didn't believe him and kept watching with mounting interest of the sort that compels people to drive very slowly and with morbid fascination past a recent pile-up on the freeway. Or, less spectacularly, the sort that lets fellows like Jerry Springer stay in business. Humans are a warped species of pack animal, and therefore very prone to this sort of thing.

MacLeod had Faye by the – for lack of anything better to grab a hold of – back of the oilskin and whispered sharply into the hood, "where do you think you're going? We need to talk."

"Razza hell fazza do," replied the hood.

"Pardon?"

The hood went down and two eyes like runny eggs sunny-side up – if egg yolk were grey, with a touch of muddled pea-green – glared up at him. "Like hell we do. I'm leaving."

MacLeod opened his mouth to reassert his request when a fierce tug ripped slick yellow plastic from his fingers. Someone was just at this moment opening the door from the outside, and Faye shouldered her way through, nudging an already soaking wet and rather bewildered Methos ass first into a convenient puddle in front of the door. As you'll always find, this puddle, and only this puddle out of the entire flooding parking lot, was at least ankle-deep and topped with a nice shiny layer of motor oil leakage.

"What the...?" said the ancient one, in the light-hearted tone of those who realize they have just been the victim of something so ridiculously slapstick that it is almost impossible to be really annoyed at it. The door rebounded and was easing itself shut again when MacLeod, in turn, came barrelling through it. Methos was just picking himself up and, incidentally, had his head in exactly the right place at the right time to be hit by it.

The obscenely yellow thing was by now nowhere to be seen. MacLeod grumbled a curse and turned around to spot Methos who was once again splayed in the puddle and looking like something crawling out of the primordial soup. They caught each other's look, and wisely said nothing.


	3. chapter 3

"No," said Joe.

_Click._

"No," said Mac.

"No, hang on... um, no."

_Click. _

"What about this one?"

"No," replied Joe. "There's something altogether too coherent about the look in this one's eyes."

"Joe, think about what you just said."

"Right," Joe frowned. "Take this face, add enough alcohol to intoxicate a pink elephant... But still not quite. Not enough bulbousness about the nose."

_Click._

"The end."

"Wow. Did we really just go through the entire database?"

"Sadly, yes," said Mac. "This was a day well spent."

"Me, I'm just grateful that plastic surgery is not an option for immortals. Ooh, just think." He shuddered.

"And that leaves us exactly where we started. Nowhere," said Mac, heaving himself stiffly out of his chair and beginning to pace up and down Joe's office. The chair appeared to groan in relief.

"Which is just as well, perhaps."

"How so?"

"I dread to imagine the trouble I could have got into had you gone after her."

"Oh, and you feel better at the thought of an unidentified immortal in Seacouver, who apparently knows about Watchers, and seemed none too pleased about having run into one."

"Point taken, but yes, actually. Unidentified means untraceable. What ever happens, headquarters won't be pinning it on me."

MacLeod snorted. "I couldn't think of very many things easier traceable than this woman's sense of colour coordination. Eye-watering, to say the least."

They both nodded with pained expressions.

"Well, in any case," said Joe. "Adam was sure he didn't recognize her, was he?"

"That's saying a lot. I mean, you try getting a good look at someone's face when you have motor oil in your eyes and a cigarette butt up your nose."

Fascinating as their trip through Immortal Showcase had been, they really could have saved themselves the trouble, as around opening time that night, the elusive Faye showed up entirely of her own accord. Joe behind the bar, Methos – who had been banging on the door to be let in half an hour before opening time – and Duncan seated at it, all dropped their jaws by at least three inches when something slick, yellow and buzzing sidled up to them.

"Good, um" – she glanced at the clock above Joe's head – "evening."

"Yes, ah, yes," said Joe.

A thick, loaded silence ensued, caused by four people each waiting very hard for someone else to say something.

Faye and the door exchanged glances. "Well," she said finally, rather more chirpy than the occasion seemed to warrant. "Here I am, then."

"Right," said Joe. "Here you are."

"We don't mean to sound rude. Or anything," said MacLeod, before more silence had a chance to settle. "But we are a bit... surprised, I believe is the word I'm looking for, to see you."

"You said you wanted to talk."

"And you said you were leaving. Which you did."

Faye sighed. "If this is the rate at which we'll be cutting to the chase, you may want to buy me a beer first."

"Duvel?" ventured Joe hopefully.

"Heavens, no. That's a one-night-a-week sort of drink. Better yet, one-night-a-month, for the wiser among us. But if you should happen to have any Hoegaarden, I'd be much obliged."

Methos, who had been brooding like an old gorilla on a diet, perked up a bit. "Hoegaarden, eh? I'll have one of those too. And if you buy it" – he turned to Faye – "I may just consider forgiving you for dumping me on my ass."

"Oh," she said. "That was you." It was an observation. Not, by any stretch, was it an apology.

Methos didn't seem to mind. He took a long gulp of the pale sour-smelling stuff while the others shuffled some money about, as it seemed a bit unclear who should be paying for what.

"Drinks are on me," said Joe in the end. Little did he know the trend these four syllables would wind up setting. "Okay," he said then. "Maybe you wouldn't mind finally telling us who you are."

"Finally?" said Faye, with a knowing grin. "You spent all day looking through your dratted database, didn't you? Counting your blessings for being a member of the 20th century, in the days following the invention of such things as filing and online picture databases and spelling, I'll bet."

Joe shuffled his knees uneasily. The feet followed. They had little choice. "How, um, did you know that?"

"Never mind that. The crux of the matter lies in what _you don't _know, and will not know."

"Which is?"

"My existence. Savvy?" She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully, as if saying that contradiction might lead her to be rather creative in the finding of bits that could be cut off. Joe swallowed. Something about the look in her eyes suggested that she could be very creative indeed. The eyebrows, on second thought, had very little to do with the overall effect, looking, as they did, rather like a pair of caterpillars doing a happy-dance.

MacLeod cut in. "I don't believe I like your looking at my friend in that tone of voice. You had better not be threatening anyone."

"Nor had you," she replied flatly. "Look, it's really not that complicated. As long as I don't start seeing pictures of my mug online or catching idiots with cameras and notepads following me around, I expect we'll all get along just fine."

"All this rather begs the question," Methos piped up, "if you aim to stay out of the way of the Watchers, why did you come back here? Simply moving on would have been the clever thing to do, wouldn't it. They had nothing on you, no name, no picture, no whereabouts. Nothing, except that you wear the ugliest excuse for a coat I've ever seen and that you showed up at Joe's one day."

Faye looked as if her feelings were hurt, although it was unclear whether this was due to Methos' purport, or the reference to her coat. The way her fingers absently stroked the material of a sleeve, as if soothing it, might have been a little hint, though.

"Do you have any idea," she said, "how bloody difficult it is to find a place that serves some decent beer around these parts?"

Methos considered this, and conceded. "Does that mean, then, that you'll be around for drinks?"

"Possibly, possibly," she said to her glass of Hoegie.

"In that case, introductions are in order," said Methos, and extended his hand. "My name is Adam. Nice to make your acquaintance."

She looked at the hand, at the glass, back at the hand, and finally at Joe. "Do we have an understanding?"

"Of course," said Joe, as if throwing his wallet at a mugger before he had a chance to pull a gun. "Definitely," he added wretchedly.

"Faye," said Faye, shaking the hand.

"Nice and, um, short," said Joe, while they too shook hands.

"Yes, well, where I come from, people tended to find names of more than one syllable too tricky to pronounce," she replied enigmatically.

"Which is where?" Joe couldn't help but try. Curiosity did, after all, kill the Watcher.

"Don't push your luck, Rumplestiltpin. If you really want to know, you'll have to buy me a hell of a lot more beer," Faye said cockily, with the implication that no amount of beer would be quite enough to get her to blab.

Five hours later.

"Mammoths," slurred Faye. Her head hit the bar with the faint click of wooden bead on polished oak. She raised it again. "With tuk... tuk... big teeth."

"Phwoaarp," trumpeted Methos, possibly attempting to imitate the noise of a charging bull, though probably not even he knew for sure.

"I don't remember the names of my family," added Faye. "I don't remember if I had any family." She thumped her head into the bar again with rather unnecessary force. "Drat the mists of time. Drat the passing of the ages. Drat it all."

"Drat it all," agreed Methos.

Faye reached unsteadily for her glass, moaned when she found it empty. "Ug," she said. "Or possibly Zog. I really can't remember."

MacLeod and Joe exchanged mystified glances. So did others of the few still remaining customers. But no one paid any serious attention. When taking into consideration the haphazard collection of empty glasses in front of her – for some reason, Faye had objected to any of them being taken away – she was really behaving rather normally. In fact, most of them seemed to find her amusing.

Joe silently resented the amount of last-minute washing-up he was being saddled with, but found some sweet vindication in the thought of the state her head would hopefully be in come morning.


End file.
